Early in the morning on Monday 21st february, about 3am, I got a taste of things to come. I was woken by Lorna, ‘Joe, my waters have just broken.’ Within about five minutes, I had turned over and gone back to sleep. Now for some of you, that may seem uncaring, thoughtless and a typical bloke type thing to do, but it wasn’t. Lornas mum is a midwife of almost 40 years service, and irrespective of any classes we went to or books we read, which just backed this up, we knew this was just the start of a long process. Lorna had walking up stairs and balancing, while sleeping, on a three foot beach ball to do. There wasn’t much I could do, and if I wanted to stay the distance, the time for sleeping was now. Well that’s what I kept telling myself, but realistically staying asleep wasn’t going to happen. The only thing I knew for certain was that I wasn’t going to make the Surrey referendum on NUS membership.

By about midday, it was time to go. The bag was packed and it was time to go. So we got to the hospital and a great deal of waiting ensued. Eight hours later and we were still waiting. The appeal of nicking Lornas gas and air had worn off, and things were starting to hurt big style for her. Over the years, I’ve been used to not necessarily have done anything wrong, but still get shouted at for it, but today was like all those days had come again, in the space of a couple of hours. Then came the epidural.

From that point, Lorna didn’t seem as bothered about the concept of trying to get something the size of a melon out of a hole the size of a lemon, pethadine had nothing on the little drip pumped straight into her spine. Sadly, despite all the pushing, the encouragement and the time, 9 centimetres was as far dilated she got, despite a target of 10. So around 1am it was decided that the emergency exit would have to be used.

So by 3am there we were, me in my beautiful greeny-blue paper uniform, lorna doped up to the eyeballs, a quick swish of a scalpel, a bit of pulling, and what do we have? A purple crying machine. What one with testicles? We were expecting one without! No matter, at least that meant we knew what to call him, we were still arguing over girls names. But all too soon it was time for me to leave as Lorna was wheeled away. Not surprisingly, all the people I felt it necessary to ring were still awake to hear the news, and most of them managed to get to the hospital in the morning before me. My own fault I suppose, staying up, texting everyone I know, posting the photos of Alexander on a messageboard some of you may have heard of. The middle name TBA was soon replaced by Robert, and all of a sudden Lorna forgot the last 24 hours and started thinking, like me, what was the best method of getting the little bugger to stop crying. Surely a theme, in the best spirit of NUS, of continual development.

The Blogs on this site represent the individual views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the policies or practices of the National Union of Students.

All links in blogs will open in a new browser window.

The permanent URL for this specific blog entry is: http://www.officeronline.co.uk/blogs/joerukin/271464.aspx